Art Artist Quotes & Sayings

An artist fights to retain the integrity of a work so that it remains a strong, clear vision. Art is and should be the act of an individual willing to say something new, something not quite familiar. — Maya Lin

But as he no longer stands on his native soil, his art can't possibly have roots. An artist creates true art for his people only as long as he lives, and suffers, among them. — Olga Grushin

Edsel is the artist in our family. Art is something I know nothing about. — Henry Ford

A great philosopher once said: 'We are what we Contemplate'
And in these modern times when mankind is constantly confronted with images of conflict and world disasters, it seems very important to contemplate the Beautiful.
It has become my personal crusade as an artist, to create images which uplift and nurture the human heart; to create that which serves as a reminder of what is Sacred and Beautiful within the drama of Life....
Ever since I can remember, my innermost nature has always been to do acts of kindness and to create, from saving lost animals, to organizing charitable events; from mothering my four children to now giving birth to the 'Art of Beauty'. — Ginger Gilmour

The absence of models, in literature as in life, to say nothing of painting, is an occupational hazard for the artist, simply because models in art, in behavior, in growth of spirit and intellect
even if rejected
enrich and enlarge one's view of existence. Deadlier still, to the artist who lacks models, is the curse of ridicule, the bringing to bear on an artist's best work, especially his or her most original, most strikingly deviant, only a fund of ignorance and the presumption that as an artist's critic one's judgement is free of the restrictions imposed by prejudice, and is well informed, indeed, about all the art in the world that really matters. — Alice Walker

Certainly there is, for the American Negro artist who can escape the restrictions the more advanced among his own group would put upon him, a great field of unused material ready for his art. — Langston Hughes

The artist vocation is to send light into the human heart. — George Sand

The artist and the multitude are natural enemies. They always will be, both ways. The artist is an enemy of the multitude, and the multitude is the enemy of the artist. And when the disguise comes off and they're both standing facing one another, they're just there at odds end. — Robert Altman

As useful as an unhappy artist. As useless as a happy philosopher. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

What an artist finds, he finds without looking for it. — Marty Rubin

I think art is sublimated libido. You can't be a eunuch priest, and you can't be a eunuch artist. — Anthony Burgess

Having Simultanagnosia (object blindness), Prosopagnosia (face blindness) and Semantic Agnosia (meaning blindness) goes in my favour with regards to abstract art living in world full of fragmented pieces when I draw it is in real time no visual memory means no "pre-formatted" picture in my mind so I go where my hand takes it's like journey that is happening in the moment, hence why I drew these without my lenses on. When I was younger I would draw pictures by "route" which made it a appear that I had a visual memory (cobbling together things out of context and making a contextual image) — Paul Isaacs

The woman who needs to create works of art is born with a kind of psychic tension in her which drives her unmercifully to find a way to balance, to make herself whole. Every human being has this need: in the artist it is mandatory. Unable to fulfill it, he goes mad. But when the artist is a woman she fulfills it at the expense of herself as a woman. — May Sarton

And to celebrate I will create a series of masterpieces showing how wrong-headed and primitive you and your ideologies are, and it is this that will pave the way to the new truth! As the artist, everyone will pay attention to me, while without a body of art to speak for you... no one will ever even remember your name!" Monsters 101, Book Ten: Class Dismissed — Muhammad Rasheed

My child has to be an artist,
because conceiving her will be the best art
my body has ever accommodated. — Nomthandazo Tsembeni

What is the spiritual purpose of the arts? It is to learn structure. Once an artist creates a true structure, then divine love can pour into it and make it a living thing of beauty. — Harold Klemp

What is the difference between "creator" and "craftsman"? The one who creates bestows being itself, he brings something out of nothing - ex nihilo sui et subiecti, as the Latin puts it - and this, in the strict sense, is a mode of operation which belongs to the Almighty alone. The craftsman, by contrast, uses something that already exists, to which he gives form and meaning. — Pope John Paul II

We live today amid ritualized anithumanisms. Among those intelligent enough to feel despair, some seek salvation in the literary artist. Artists love flattery; and the scam doesn't work without mystifying the process.

The weather is unpredictable, but it is not mysterious.

Wall Street is unpredictable, but it is not mysterious.

Writing is unpredictable, (like street and sky, there are too many variables.) Its mystery vanishes, like a shadow, the moment the light aimed at your characters turns back upon yourself. — Doran Larson

A cultured society that has fallen away from its religious traditions expects more from art than the aesthetic consciousness and the 'standpoint of art' can deliver. The Romantic desire for a new mythology ... gives the artist and his task in the world the consciousness of a new consecration. He is something like a 'secular saviour' for his creations are expected to achieve on a small scale the propitiation of disaster for which an unsaved world hopes. — Hans-Georg Gadamer

... Any talent - whether to write songs or to write novels...came with the obligation to use it to the fullest of one's ability, with a fierce commitment barely distinguishable from neurotic obsession. ... In fact...commitment to the point of obsession wasn't merely an obligation but a necessity... — Dean Koontz

The only thing worse than a silly politician analyzing art is a silly artist analyzing politics — Jonathan Alter

Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art. Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art. — Oscar Wilde

As an artist, I think you always have to take care of yourself as a person probably even more than the average person because your body is so important to your art. — Josh Young

Artistic qualities that once seemed undeniable don't seem so now. Sometimes these fluctuations are only fickleness of taste, momentary glitches in an artist's work, or an artist getting ahead of his audience (it took me ten years to catch up to Albert Oehlen). Other times, however, these problems mean there's something wrong with the art. — Jerry Saltz

I never wanted to study art. And I don't think you need to study art if you are an artist. It's even dangerous to go to school. You need to do whatever you want, as you want. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

The artist himself is often surprised at the finished work of art. He cannot tell 'how it happened', nor could he repeat the feat at someone's bidding. — John F. Carlson

If our ballets be feeble, monotonous and dull, if they be devoid of ideas, meaning, expression and character, it is less the fault of the art than that of the artist. — Jean-Georges Noverre

I have wanted to be a fine artist painter, and I reached the point in art schools were I'd like to understand more about images and how images communicate information to people. And I was not getting very far in that from my professors. — John Hench

Science is a capital or fund perpetually reinvested; it accumulates, rolls up, is carried forward by every new man. Every man of science has all the science before him to go upon, to set himself up in business with. What an enormous sum Darwin availed himself of and reinvested! Not so in literature; to every poet, to every artist, it is still the first day of creation, so far as the essentials of his task are concerned. Literature is not so much a fund to be reinvested as it is a crop to be ever new-grown. — John Burroughs

Despite the variety of my explorations, throughout it all it has been my contention that my responsibility as an artist is to work, to sing for my supper, to make art, beautiful and powerful, that adds and reveals; to beautify the mess of a messy world, to heal the sick and feed the helpless; to shout bravely from the roof-tops and storm barricaded doors and voice the specifics of our historic moment. — Carrie Mae Weems

For me, being an artist with a high profile is a good thing for art. — Tracey Emin

A degree in art doesn't automatically make you an artist any more than lacking a degree precludes you from becoming an artist. — Ted Orland

A work of art does not need an explanation. The work has to speak for itself. The work may be subject to many interpretations, but only one was in the mind of the artist. Some artists say to make the work readable for the public is an artist's responsibility, but I don't agree with that. The only responsibility to be absolutely truthful to the self. My work disturbs people and nobody wants to be disturbed They are not fully aware of the effect my work has on them, but they know it is disturbing. — Louise Bourgeois

From the first time he'd met her, he'd sensed an air of contradiction about her. She was very much a woman, but still retained a waiflike quality. She could be brash, and at times deliberately suggestive, yet she was painfully shy. She was incredibly easy to get along with, yet she had few friends. She was a talented artist in her own right, but so self-conscious about her work that she rarely completed a piece and preferred to work with other people's art and ideas ... — Charles De Lint

Most great art is created when the artist feels they are channeling something rather than trying to communicate something. — Donald Miller

Kitsch is art that follows established rules in a time when all rules in art are put into question by each artist. — Harold Rosenberg

And often he who has chosen the fate of the artist because he felt himself to be different soon realizes that he can maintain neither his art nor his difference unless he admits that he is like the others. The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from. — Albert Camus

So perhaps the reason I shuddered at the idea of writing something about 'Christian art' is that to paint a picture or to write a story or to compose a song is an incarnational activity. The artist is a servant who is willing to be a birth-giver. In a very real sense the artist (male or female) should be like Mary, who, when the angel told her that she was to bear the Messiah, was obedient to the command. Obedience is an unpopular word nowadays, but the artist must be obedient to the work, whether it be a symphony, a painting, or a story for a small child. I believe that each work of art, whether it is a work of great genius or something very small, comes to the artist and says 'Here I am. Enflesh me. Give birth to me.' And the artist either says 'My soul doth magnify the Lord' and willingly becomes the bearer of the work, or refuses; but the obedient response is not necessicarily a conscious one, and not everyone has the humble, courageous obedience of Mary. — Madeleine L'Engle

A main part of the struggle of art has been to make an art that is direct, simple, humane, unconnected with powers that be in their essence ... To the degree that it is connected with the bourgeoisie via the marketplace and so on is not necessarily an artist's problem. — Robert Motherwell

Remember: It costs nothing to encourage an artist, and the potential benefits are staggering. A pat on the back to an artist now could one day result in your favorite film, or the cartoon you love to get stoned watching, or the song that saves your life. Discourage an artist, you get absolutely nothing in return, ever. — Kevin Smith

It starts off like climbing a tree or solving a puzzle - poetry, if nothing else, is just fun to write. But deeper into each and every piece, you no longer hesitate to call it work. It's passion. A poet's sense of lyrical accomplishment is then his food and water, his means of survival. — Criss Jami

The practise of an art is essential to the whole man, not because of what art is but because of what art does to the artist. — John Fowles

Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul. And when he has made it, it is not given to all to know it. To recognize it you must repeat the adventure of the artist. It is a melody that he sings to you, and to hear it again in your own heart you want knowledge and sensitiveness and imagination. — W. Somerset Maugham

A very fine artist can take something quite ordinary and, through sheer artistry and willpower, turn it into a work of art. — Truman Capote

I am a famous artist. I make millions. But I frequently see debut shows of unknown artists with prices that are double of mine ... what they're really doing is barely getting by and helping me sell 1,000 paintings a year effortlessly, because they make my paintings look like such a bargain. Thank you to all the egotistical art students! — Mark Kostabi

But Hannah's friend didn't understand the volatile balancing act between art and sanity, that the act of creation was like walking a tightrope during an earthquake. She didn't understand Hannah's stupid need for validation, or that the size of the audience increased the stakes and multiplied the fear. She didn't understand that creativity was dangerous, that, yes, there were some people who could stand before a canvas, paint a sunset that would bring the world to its knees, and return to their loved ones as a complete person who didn't hurt, didn't cry, didn't spill blood to appease the host of fickle muses. But Hannah did. Hannah's best ideas - sometimes her only ideas - were buried beneath the skin. — Jake Vander Ark

Science for me is very close to art. Scientific discovery is an irrational act. It's an intuition which turns out to be reality at the end of it-and I see no difference between a scientist developing a marvellous discovery and an artist making a painting. — Carlo Rubbia

I blame myself without reserve for my weakness. It was merely weakness. One half-hour with Art was always more to me than a cycle with you. Nothing really at any period of my life was ever of the smallest importance to me compared with Art. But in the case of an artist, weakness is nothing less than a crime, when it is a weakness that paralyses the imagination. — Oscar Wilde

That life has no clear meaning is the best possible news for an artist. — Marty Rubin

The public is the tribunal before which all art is judged - not the critics or the academies. The public is the artist's only patron, and has certain fundamental rights. It will submit to education, and will respond to suggestion, but it will not be bullied. — Walter J. Phillips

Artists are supposed to stay hungry." "That's bullshit. That's a myth invented to keep the artist down because art is powerful. You give an artist both money and power and they're dangerous. — Michael Connelly

I am not a great cook, I am not a great artist, but I love art, and I love food, so I am the perfect traveller. — Michael Palin

The deep secret at the core of art, in the artist himself, was the embodying of an instinct for play. — Sandor Marai

That a work of creation struggles and insistently demands to be brought into being is a fact that no genuine artist would think of denying. — Dorothy L. Sayers

The source of our art then is not in the achievements of other artists in other days and lands, although it has learned a great deal from these, our art is founded on a long and growing love and understanding of the North in an ever clearer experience of oneness with the informing spirit of the whole land and a strange brooding sense of Mother Nature fostering a new race and a new age ... So the Canadian artist was drawn North. — Lawren Harris

Time is not a great artist but weakens all he touches. — William Hogarth

An artist reveals his naked soul in his work - and so, gentle reader, do you when you respond to it. — Ayn Rand

That horrible moment of suspense when the artist shows one of his creations to strange eyes for the first time. — Irving Stone

Music is the most absorbing of all the arts. It absorbs the mind of the artist, whether creator or executant, to the exclusion of every other consideration outside his own immediate necessities or desires. — Baroness Orczy

I think, like any artist, those baby songs are not the best things you've ever written, but they count because they're you're first attempts at creating art and expressing yourself. — Rachel Platten

The study of art is a lifetime matter. The best any artist can do is to accumulate all the knowledge possible of art and its principles, study nature often and then practice continually. — Edgar Alwin Payne

Like any artist without an art form, she became dangerous. — Toni Morrison

As an artist you have to find something that deeply interests you. It's not enough to make art that is about art, to look at Matisse and Picasso and say, how can I paint like them? You have to be obsessed by something that can't come out in any other way, then the other things - the skill and technique - will follow. — Anselm Kiefer

Our life is a work of art. We must seek always to be its artist. — Kent Nerburn

There are so many rules in the art world. I don't like rules and I break them all the time. I don't care if people think I'm overexposed. What I care about is if I'm going to run out of energy. Overexposure is only a problem if you are drained of energy and cannot come up with new ideas. Every artist has to recognize that and know when to stop for a moment. — Marina Abramovic

The great artist is the simplifier. — Vincent Van Gogh

The Majesty guitar symbolizes the very reason why I am so proud to be a Music Man artist. I had the idea for this guitar a couple of years ago but it is because of their innovative spirit and dedication to the art of guitar building that it is now a reality. I am so grateful that I am able to collaborate with the best guitar company on the planet and so incredibly proud that together we have created what is to me, the perfect musical instrument for guitar players. I really hope you get a chance to play one and am confident that you will feel the same! — John Petrucci

In all technai or arts (medicine perhaps most of all), there is a self-exhilaration on the part of the practitioner (the intoxication of the ego with its own potency) which is infectious: the patient enjoys a placebo-effect which redounds to the ego of the "artist." — Kenny Smith

If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer you: I am here to live out loud. — Emile Zola

At Cornell, my acting teacher said you cannot be religious and be an artist. I sort of got it, because faith is a comfort and art comes from a lot of places, in a lot of people, from the dark chasm. — Catherine Hicks

Is, er, your friend a member of college staff?"
"No, Al's an artist. And, ah, he's my partner," Larry said. I like it when he calls me that.
I don't think Matthew's mum liked it. "How ... lovely. Is that how you met? Through ... art?"
Larry said "Yes" just as I said, "No, we met when I was having a piss in an alley. — J.L. Merrow

Art arises when the secret vision of the artist and the manifestation of nature agree to find new shapes. — Kahlil Gibran

I think great art goes beyond the control of the artist. In some ways, art often makes itself and reveals things about that artist that maybe the artist is not fully conscious of. — Lisa Yuskavage

Nothing helps an artist's career more than a little death and obscurity. — Dan Simmons

What then is to be the lot of Rossetti's fame and influence? 'An amateur who failed in two arts', it is true; yet it hardly harms Rossetti or touches his standing. On the contrary, it defines both very brilliantly. The small word 'failed' is a small word and little more to artists who are forever going on until they give up over a game that must be lost. Every artist, when confronted by the immensities of art, which is life, must confess to failure. A failure is a thing very relative. — Ford Madox Ford

Henry James proposed asking of art three modest and appropriate questions: What is the artist trying to do? Does he do it? Was it worth doing? — Robert Adams

Western art is built on the biographical passion of one artist for another. — Jim Dine

My problem is that my body acts before my brain thinks ... it sometimes brings me huge trouble, or also huge success. recently, my body and brain got come to an agreement. it may be far better to live this gambling life than living in boring average ... they at least make my art more interesting — Hiroko Sakai

It's not the struggle that makes us artists, but Art that makes us struggle. — Albert Camus

Perhaps art can help us to look beyond the immediate beauty with all its puzzles, and to glimpse that new creation which makes sense not only of beauty but of the world as a whole, and ourselves within it ... The artist can then join forces with those who work for justice and those who struggle for redemptive relationships, and together encourage and sustain those who are reaching out for a genuine, redemptive spirituality. — N. T. Wright

Reading is an art form, and every man can be an artist. — Edwin Louis Cole

Art is the activity that exalts and denies simultaneously. "No artist tolerates reality," says Nietzsche. That
is true, but no artist can get along without reality. Artistic creation is a demand for unity and a rejection of
the world. But it rejects the world on account of what it lacks and in the name of what it sometimes is.
Rebellion can be observed here in its pure state and in its original complexities. Thus art should give us a
final perspective on the content of rebellion. — Albert Camus

In every artist there is poetry. In every human being there is the poetic element. We know, we feel, we believe. — Ernst Haas

My life is an art and I am the artist. — Debasish Mridha

Better far
Pursue a frivolous trade by serious means,
Than a sublime art frivolously. — Elizabeth Barrett Browning

It is almost as safe to assume that an artist of any dignity is against his country, i.e., against the environment in which God hath placed him, as it is to assume that his country is against the artist. — H.L. Mencken

Art itself shuns commonality: while the scientist may seek the phenomenon that repeats itself, the artist seeks the exception. — Dore Ashton

The only thing that makes one an artist is making art. And that requires the precise opposite of hanging out; a deeply lonely and unglamorous task of tolerating oneself long enough to push something out. — David Rakoff

When you see a fish you don't think of its scales, do you? You think of its speed, its floating, flashing body seen through the water. Well, I've tried to express just that. If I made fins and eyes and scales, I would arrest its movement, give a pattern or shape of reality. I want just the flash of its spirits. — Constantin Brancusi

Freeform radio is an art form. The airwaves are the empty canvas, the producer is the artist, and the sound is the paint. — Julius Lester

A piece of art is part of its creator, you cannot split them apart. You cannot like one and dislike another. — Sameh Elsayed

One is either an artist or one is not. It is not something one becomes. It is something that one is from birth. We do not study to be artists. We study to become more proficient. To understand more. — Edward Swift

Photography does not form a separate, barren field of art. It is only a means of execution, uniform, rapid and sure, which serves the artist by reproducing with mathematical precision the form and effect of objects and even that poetry which at once arises from any harmonious combination. — Charles Negre

For the novelist or poet, for the scientist or artist, the question is not where do ideas come from, the question is how they come. The how is the mystery. The how is fragile. — E.L. Konigsburg

It art can only succeed through the cooperating imagination and intelligence of its consumers, who fill out, for themselves, the artist's world and make it round, and whose own special genius partly determine the ultimate glory of it. — William H Gass

My parents did not discourage me but could not understand how I could make a living by art. Their idea of an artist was a person who was condemned to starvation. — Jacob Epstein

Opposites though they are, both solitude and solidarity are essential if the artist is to produce works that are not only significant to his or her age, but that will also speak to future generations. — Rollo May

Mournful and yet grand is the destiny of the artist. — Franz Liszt

What makes someone an artist? I don't think is has anything to do with a paintbrush. There are painters who follow the numbers, or paint billboards, or work in a small village in China, painting reproductions. These folks, while swell people, aren't artists. On the other hand, Charlie Chaplin was an artist, beyond a doubt. So is Jonathan Ive, who designed the iPod. You can be an artist who works with oil paints or marble, sure. But there are artists who work with numbers, business models, and customer conversations. Art is about intent and communication, not substances. — Seth Godin

The portrait is one of the most curious art forms. It demands special qualities in the artist, and an almost total kinship with the model. — Henri Matisse